Investment in primary care has the power to improve health equity more than any other part of our health care system. Immediate and concerted action is needed by payers serving the same communities to collaborate on how they pay for primary care to improve health equity and address disparities in care. Healthforce Center’s Director Dr. Sunita Mutha offered her expert insights on this December 2021 panel about how Californians can work together to realize a future vision for better primary care.
We know that primary care is essential for good health, but access to primary care in California varies greatly, with large swaths of the state competing for attention from increasingly fewer doctors. The primary care shortage is complex, rooted in decisions that future doctors make long before they attend medical school, the cost of their education, where they choose to live, and the financial lure of specialty practice. First, a few facts:
As we close up the year, it’s a great opportunity to look back on what we’ve accomplished. The California Improvement Network (CIN), a community that aims to spread better ideas for care delivery, had a busy year establishing connections, learning about quality improvement ideas and innovations, and taking actions to improve care.
Healthforce Center at UCSF Associate Director of Research Joanne Spetz, PhD, co-authored a blog in Health Affairs that includes 16 workforce recommendations for field experts, policy makers and health care leaders, to adopt to better meet the needs of an aging population and those dealing with chronic and serious illness.
The California Improvement Network (CIN), which is a project of the California Health Care Foundation and administered by Healthforce Center at UCSF, is a community of health care professionals dedicated to driving improvements in patient and provider experience and population health, while lowering the cost of care. As part of its efforts to spread better ideas for care delivery, the network finds, documents and shares innovative quality improvement projects throughout the state.
Recently, Jason Flatt, PhD, MPH joined Healthforce Center’s faculty. He wears many hats at UCSF as an assistant professor in the Institute for Health and Aging, department of social and behavioral sciences, and assistant director of the Masters of Science in Healthcare Administration and Interprofessional Leadership (MS-HAIL) at the school of nursing. He’s especially interested in exploring different models of health care and workforce-related issues for dementia care.
Since 2015, the California Emergency Medical Services Authority (EMSA) has been testing the viability of asking paramedics to step outside of their traditional scope of practice. Known as Community Paramedicine (CP), or mobile integrated health (MIH-CP), this model of care aims to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of health care delivery by creating partnerships between existing paramedics and other health care providers in local settings.
Healthforce Center Associate Director of Research Joanne Spetz, PhD, was interviewed for a nursing website (onlinefnpprograms.com) about her research on policies, politics and nursing practice that affect nursing leaders across the country. Below are excerpts from that conversation.